by Molly Thynne
Arkwright smiled.
“The date of the wedding, I suppose,” he said.
“No, you’ll see that in the Morning Post shortly. This concerns both you and the Duke. His hat and coat were found last night by his chauffeur. Civita had left them in the car.”
“I can see him now when he realized what had happened!” said Arkwright with a reminiscent chuckle.
Then his face sobered.
“Lady Malmsey’s in a bad way, I hear,” he added.
“They say she’ll never walk again. The Duchess, having ostracized her for years, is kindness itself now and talks of putting her up as soon as she comes out of hospital. The unfortunate creature lives in a kind of elaborated cocktail-bar she calls a flat, with no accommodation for nurses, and she has no friends that are of any use to her at a time like this. She’d reached a pitch at which she was hardly responsible for her actions.”
Arkwright, who was absently staring at the papers before him, raised his head.
“If she had been she’d hardly have been driving hell-for-leather through the streets like that,” he said. “Civita supplied her with the stuff, and, properly speaking, it was the stuff that killed him. There’s a queer kind of justice in things sometimes.”
THE END
About The Author
MARY ‘MOLLY’ THYNNE was born in 1881, a member of the aristocracy, and related, on her mother’s side, to the painter James McNeil Whistler. She grew up in Kensington and at a young age met literary figures like Rudyard Kipling and Henry James.
Her first novel, An Uncertain Glory, was published in 1914, but she did not turn to crime fiction until The Draycott Murder Mystery, the first of six golden age mysteries she wrote and published in as many years, between 1928 and 1933. The last three of these featured Dr. Constantine, chess master and amateur sleuth par excellence.
Molly Thynne never married. She enjoyed travelling abroad, but spent most of her life in the village of Bovey Tracey, Devon, where she was finally laid to rest in 1950.
By Molly Thynne
and available from Dean Street Press
The Draycott Murder Mystery
The Murder on the Enriqueta
The Case of Sir Adam Braid
The Crime at the ‘Noah’s Ark’: a Christmas Mystery
Death in the Dentist’s Chair
He Dies and Makes no Sign
Molly Thynne
The Draycott Murder Mystery
There was something about those hands, with their strangely crisped fingers, as though they had been arrested in the very act of closing, that somehow gave the lie to the woman’s attitude of sleep.
A howling gale … A lonely farmhouse … the tread of a mysterious stranger … and then the corpse of a beautiful blonde, seemingly stopped in the act of writing.
This is all a bit much for local bobby PC Gunnet, especially when it seems the dead – and aristocratic – woman shouldn’t even have been there in the first place. But nonetheless the owner of the farm, John Leslie, is convicted, and his guilt looks certain. Certain, that is, until the eccentric Allen “Hatter” Fayre, an old India hand, begins to look more deeply into the case and discovers more than one rival suspect in this classic and satisfying puzzler.
The Draycott Murder Mystery, a whodunit hinging enigmatically on the evidence of a fountain pen, was first published in 1928. This new edition, the first for many decades, includes a new introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
CHAPTER I
The wind swept down the crooked main street of the little village of Keys with a shriek that made those fortunate inhabitants who had nothing to tempt them from their warm firesides draw their chairs closer and speculate as to the number of trees that would be found blown down on the morrow.
All through the month of March it had rained, almost without ceasing, and now, in the fourth week, the north of England had been visited by an icy gale which had already lasted two days and showed no signs of abating. The lanes, that for weeks had been knee-deep in mud, had dried with almost miraculous swiftness and the more frugal of the cottagers had gleaned a fine store of wood from the branches with which they were strewn. To-night they were thankful to sit indoors and enjoy the fruits of their industry.
The gale swept on its devastating way across the open meadow-land that surrounded Keys, increasing every moment in violence and causing the timbers of the small farmhouse which stood at the end of a blind lane about a mile from the village to creak and groan under its terrific onslaught.
The front door of the house stood open and, with each gust of wind, it swung with a heavy thud against the inside wall of the dark passage, but no one came to close it and there was no light at any of the windows of the apparently deserted house.
Once the gale dropped for a moment and the monotonous barking of a dog in a distant farmhouse could be heard; beyond this there was no sound but the renewed, long-drawn howl of the wind, the protesting creak of the trees as the heavy branches were swept across each other, and the dull thud of the swinging door.
The sun had set and it was already dark when the first sound of footsteps was heard in the lane. The walker approached quickly, with an odd, shuffling tread that became almost noiseless as he neared the house. Arrived at the gate which led into the little front garden, he paused for a moment, then, without opening it, slid away like a shadow in the direction of the barn that stood on the other side of the farmyard. Whatever his business may have been there he made no sound, and for nearly an hour after he had passed the farmhouse stood silent and deserted and the open door continued to swing monotonously on its hinges.
Then a second shadow loomed out of the darkness of the lane. This time there was the click of the latch as the newcomer opened the gate and went quickly up the path to the front door. Here he paused with a sharp exclamation of surprise, then passed on into the hallway beyond. There was the scratch and flare of a match, followed by a steadier glow as he lit an oil-lamp that stood by the door. Carrying the lamp, he went first to the front door and examined the latch to see that it was undamaged before closing it. Then he passed on into the little kitchen at the back of the house, placed the lamp on the table, and was about to put a light to the fire when he discovered that his matches had run out. He had used the last one to light the lamp.
With an exclamation of annoyance he picked up the lamp once more and made his way to the sitting-room, one of the two rooms that lay right and left of the front door. He moved quickly, his mind intent on the food and warmth he needed badly, for he had walked a long way in the bitter wind and was feeling both hungry and tired. Dazzled by the glare of the lamp in his eyes, he was already well inside the door of the sitting-room when he saw the thing that pulled him up with a jerk as sharp as though some one had laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.
He stood arrested, holding the lamp at such an angle that it smoked violently. But the black fumes drifted past his nose unheeded.
For the room which he had thought untenanted save for himself held yet another occupant.
Seated at the writing-table facing the door, her arms outflung across it and her head pillowed on the open blotter between them, was a woman.
From where he stood he could see only the top of her head, a tangle of fair curls that gleamed yellow as spun gold in the lamplight, and the rich fur collar of the coat in which she was wrapped. He could see her hands, too, and the sparkle of her rings. There was something about those hands, with their strangely crisped fingers, as though they had been arrested in the very act of closing, that somehow gave the lie to the woman’s attitude of sleep.
But it was not her hands or the beauty of her hair that held the eyes of the man at the door. They were glued to the open blotter and the stain which had spread across it, a stain which had already stiffened the fair curls that lay so still upon the once white paper into hard little rings and which was even now fading from its first bright scarlet into a dull rust.
He stood motionless, oblivious of
the acrid odour of the smoking lamp, then, with an effort, pulled himself together and crossed the room. Placing the light on the mantelpiece, he bent over the woman and laid his hand gently on hers; but he knew, even before he touched her, that she was beyond all human aid. Raising the thick fair hair at the side of her head he revealed a wound in the temple from which the blood had already ceased to flow.
As he straightened himself after his brief examination, his eyes went instinctively to the window; but he was not quick enough.
Had he been a second earlier he would have seen the white face of a man, pressed against the glass outside, taking in every detail of the room and its grim occupant. As he was in the very act of raising his head the watcher ducked below the sill of the window and when, a few minutes later, he ran out of the front door, after a hurried search through the house, there was no one either in the barn or any of the outhouses.
The unseen watcher at the window had vanished like a shadow into the darkness of the night.
Published by Dean Street Press 2016
Copyright © 1933 Molly Thynne
Introduction Copyright © 2016 Curtis Evans
All Rights Reserved
This ebook is published by licence, issued under the UK Orphan Works Licensing Scheme.
First published in 1933 by Hutchinson
Cover by DSP
ISBN 978 1 911413 62 2
www.deanstreetpress.co.uk
